New Books
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The World's Fair Quilt
A timely celebration of quilting, family, community, and history in this latest novel in the perennially popular Elm Creek Quilts series from New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Chiaverini.
As fall paints the Pennsylvania countryside in flaming colors, Sylvia Bergstrom Compson is contemplating the future of her beloved Elm Creek Quilts. The Elm Creek Quilt Camp remains the most popular quilter's retreat in the country, but unexpected financial difficulties have beset them and the Bergstrom family's stately nineteenth-century manor. Now in her eighth decade, Sylvia is determined to maintain her family's legacy, but she needs new resources--financial and emotional.
Summer Sullivan--a founding Elm Creek Quilter--arrives to discuss an antique quilt that she wants to display at the Waterford Historical Society's quilt exhibit. When Sylvia and her sister Claudia were teenagers, they had entered a quilt in the Sears National Quilt Contest for the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition, also known as the Chicago World's Fair. The Bergstrom sisters' quilt would be perfect for the Historical Society's exhibit, Summer explains.
Sylvia is reluctant to lend out the quilt, which has been stored in the attic for decades, nearly forgotten. In keeping with the contest's "Century of Progress" theme, the girls illustrated progress of values--scenes of the Emancipation Proclamation, woman's suffrage, and labor unions. But although it won ribbons, the quilt also drove a wedge between the sisters.
As Sylvia reluctantly retraces her quilt's story for Summer, she makes an unexpected discovery--one that restores some of her faith in this unique work of art, and helps shine some light on a way forward for the Elm Creek Quilts community.
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A Forty Year Kiss
"A story that captures the hope, grace, and joy of new love--but also the mistakes, scar tissue, and regret of past love. It's a wonder to behold, a novel capable of such breadth. This is the kind of book that makes me a better human." --Nathan Hill, New York Times bestselling author of The Nix and Wellness
From the critically acclaimed author of Shotgun Lovesongs comes an exquisitely written, small-town story about one couple's hard-won second chance at love, forty years after their divorce.
Charlie and Vivian parted ways after just four years of marriage. Too many problems, too many struggles, even though the love didn't quite die. When Charlie returns to Wisconsin forty years later, he's not sure what he'll find. He is sure of one thing -- he must try to reconnect with Vivian to pick up the broken pieces of their past. But forty years is a long time. It's forty years of other relationships, forty years of building new lives, and forty years of long-held regrets, mistakes, and painful secrets.
A brave and triumphant exploration of redemption and sunset triumph, A Forty Year Kiss is a once-in-a-lifetime love story, written with dazzling lyricism and remarkable clarity of spirit, from a celebrated author at the top of his game. It's a literary valentine that promises to be a love story for the ages.
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The Umbrella Maker's Son
"This powerful, heart-wrenching novel follows a young Polish Jew through his incredible journey to escape the Nazis. Reuven's story typifies that of millions of others experiencing the horrors and deprivations suffered by Jews in WWII and those who tried to help them. And yet, it is also an ultimately uplifting and inspiring tale of one man's coming of age in horrific times."--Heather Morris, #1 bestselling author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz
For fans of Heather Morris and Lisa Barr, a powerful and unforgettable novel of survival against all odds and the remarkable power of love, in which a Jewish teenager in World War II Poland fights to save his life and find the young woman who holds his heart.
Born to a secure, middle-class Polish Jewish family, seventeen-year-old Reuven works alongside his father, an artisan businessman whose shop creates the finest handmade umbrellas in Poland. But the family's peaceful life shatters when the Nazis invade their homeland, igniting World War II. With terrifying brutality, the Nazis confiscate their business, evict them from their home, and strip away their rights, threatening the lives of the city's Jewish population, including Reuven and Zelda, the girl he loves.
Shortly after the Nazi occupation, Zelda and her family disappear, and Reuven and his father are forced into backbreaking physical labor that nearly kills them. For the young man and his family, the only chance to survive is escape--and some of them will die trying.
Fleeing a Nazi ambush through the surrounding forest, shot and wounded, Reuven is found by a local farmer who has never met a Jew--and agrees to help because he needs the boy to work the farm with him. The farmer's wife, however, is not as kind. Her betrayal forces a desperate Reuven to escape. He embarks on a perilous journey through the Polish countryside, determined to reach the Kraków ghetto where he hopes to reunite with Zelda, whose life has also been forever changed by the horrors of occupation and war.
A love story and a story of family, The Umbrella Maker's Son is a riveting, heartfelt, and beautiful tale of survival and unexpected hope in the face of terror and violence. A chronicle of triumph, it joins the ranks of The Tattooist of Auschwitz and other memorable works of modern Holocaust literature.
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Promise Me Sunshine
How do you find yourself after you lose the one you loved the most?
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Grieving the loss of her best friend, a young woman’s life is turned upside down when she meets a grumpy stranger who swears he can help her live again, in this heartwarming, slow-burn romance by the author of Ready or Not.
Lenny’s a bit of a mess at the moment. Ever since cancer stole away her best friend, she has been completely lost. She’s avoiding her concerned parents, the apartment she shared with her best friend, and the ever-laminated “live again” list of things she’s promised to do to survive her grief. But maybe if she acts like she has it all together, no one will notice she’s falling apart.
The only gigs she can handle right now are temporary babysitting jobs, and she just landed a great one, helping overworked, single mom Reese and her precocious daughter, Ainsley. The only catch: Ainsley’s uncle, Miles, always seems to be around, and is kind of. . . a walking version of the grumpy cat meme. Worse – he seems to be able to see right through her.
Surprisingly, Miles knows a lot about grief and he offers Lenny a proposition. He’ll help her complete everything on her “live again” list if she’ll help him connect with Ainsley and overcome his complicated relationship with Reese. Lenny doubts anything can fill the void her best friend has left behind, but between late night ferry rides, midnight ramen, and a well-placed shoulder whenever she needs it, Miles just won’t stop showing up for her. Turns out, sometimes your life has to end to find your new beginning. -
Novel Threat
In a world of covert codes, two CIA operatives must infiltrate a New York publishing house, where every word on the page could be a weapon.
Brandon Hale, a seasoned CIA case officer, contemplates walking away from the covert world of espionage behind to embark on a quieter path in publishing. But his plan takes an abrupt turn when a critical source within the Labyrinth terrorist organization is assassinated, leaving behind a cryptic message about a New York publishing house. Rather than submitting his resignation, Brandon finds himself going undercover at Monroe Publishing to stop the next terrorist strike against the US.
Kimber Seidel, a CIA finance officer with secret aspirations of becoming a novelist, enjoys a serendipitous encounter with a handsome book lover like herself on her way home from London. Though she cannot reveal her true employment to her new friend, Brandon Hale, she can't deny the instant spark that ignites between them. When Kimber's manuscript is unexpectedly shopped to Monroe Publishing as a pawn in the CIA's counterterrorism plot, Kimber must navigate the intersection of her literary dreams and her covert life as well as her deepening connection with Brandon.
Though each decoded message is leading Brandon and Kimber closer to the truth, it is also leading them into the line of fire, where the stakes are higher than anyone ever imagined.
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Nobody's Fool
In this stunningly twisty thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Harlan Coben, a secret from former Detective Sami Kierce's college days comes back to haunt him. His memory is clear, but all these years later, the facts don't add up...which is something he cannot ignore.
Sami Kierce, a young college grad backpacking in Spain with friends, wakes up one morning, covered in blood. There's a knife in his hand. Beside him, the body of his girlfriend. Anna. Dead. He doesn't know what happened. His screams drown out his thoughts--and then he runs.
Twenty-two years later, Kierce, now a private investigator, is a new father who's working off his debts by doing low level surveillance jobs and teaching wannabe sleuths at a night school in New York City. One evening, he recognizes a familiar face at the back of the classroom. Anna. It's unmistakably her. As soon as Kierce makes eye contact with her, she bolts. For Kierce there is no choice. He knows he must find this woman and solve the impossible mystery that has haunted his every waking moment since that terrible day.
His investigation will bring him face-to-face with his past--and prove, after all this time, he's nobody's fool.
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Count My Lies
A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK
“The very definition of a page-turner! This smart, original, twisty story had me gripped from the first to the last page.” —Liane Moriarty, New York Times bestselling author
A read-in-one-night suspense thriller narrated by a compulsive liar whose little white lies allow her to enter into the life and comfort of a wealthy married couple who are harboring much darker secrets themselves. For the millions of us still chasing those gone girls, this is perfect for fans of Lisa Jewell, Lucy Foley, and Laura Dave.
Sloane Caraway is a liar.
Harmless lies, mostly, to make her self-proclaimed sad, little life a bit more interesting.
So when Sloane sees a young girl in tears at a park one afternoon, she can’t help herself—she tells the girl’s (very attractive) dad she’s a nurse and helps him pull a bee stinger from the girl’s foot.
With this lie, and chance encounter, Sloane becomes the nanny for the wealthy, and privileged Jay and Violet Lockhart. The perfect New York couple, with a brownstone, a daughter in private school, and summers on Block Island.
But maybe Sloane isn’t the only one lying, and all that’s picture-perfect harbors a much more dangerous truth. To say anything more is to spoil the most exciting, twisty, and bitingly smart suspense novel to come out in years.
The thing about lies is that they add up, form their own truth and a twisted prison of a world. And in Count My Lies, Sophie Stava spins a breakneck, unputdownable thriller about the secrets we keep, and the terrifying dangers that lurk just under the images we spend so much time trying to maintain.
Careful what you lie for. -
Witness 8
"Something is wrong with Ruby Johnson. A former resident of the ultra-elite Manhattan upper class, Ruby now works as a maid in the type of houses she used to live in. Unassuming, she sees everyone's dirty secrets from the inside of their beautiful, renovated brownstones. But when Ruby witnesses a murder, she has wicked plans in mind that don't involve telling the authorities the truth. Eddie Flynn, streetwise ex con-artist-turned-defense attorney, is the only lawyer in New York City willing to take on hopeless cases. And none is more hopeless than John Jackson's--the gun that killed his neighbor found, with Jackson's DNA, in his own home. Flynn and his unconventional team will need to use every trick they know to keep an innocent man from being locked up. But to save his client's life, Eddie must first protect his own, as the scariest organized criminals in the city are out for his head."
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The Next Conversation
THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
From communication expert Jefferson Fisher, the definitive book on making your next conversation the one that changes everything
No matter who you’re talking to, The Next Conversation gives you immediately actionable strategies and phrases that will forever change how you communicate. Jefferson Fisher, trial lawyer and one of the leading voices on real-world communication, offers a tried-and-true framework that will show you how to transform your life and your relationships by improving your next conversation.
Fisher has gained millions of followers through short, simple, practical videos teaching people how to argue less and talk more. Whether it’s handling a heated conversation, dealing with a difficult personality, or standing your ground with confidence, his down-to-earth teachings have helped countless people navigate life’s toughest situations. Now for the first time, Fisher has distilled his three-part communication system (Say it with control, Say it with confidence, Say it to connect) that can easily be applied to any situation.
You will learn:
- Why you should never “win” an argument
- How to assert yourself and communicate with intention
- How to set boundaries and frame conversations
- Why saying less is often more
- How to overcome conflict with connection
The Next Conversation will give you practical phrases that will lead to powerful results, from breaking down defensiveness in a hard talk with a family member to finding your own assertive voice at the boardroom conference table. Your every word matters, and by controlling how you communicate every day, you will create waves of positive impact that will resonate throughout your relationships to last a lifetime.
Everything you want to say, and how you want to say it, can be found in The Next Conversation. -
The Curious Kitchen Gardener
Enjoy a whole new tasty cuisine using unexpected ingredients you can find in your own garden, from a Master Food Preserver and Gardener.
The Curious Kitchen Gardener is for cooks and gardeners interested in bringing novelty and variety into their lives and homes. It follows each season of planting and harvesting-featuring nearly 35 often overlooked edibles, with illustrations, and a delicious recipe for each, encouraging us to see our gardens as an integrated whole and a year-round practice. Calling upon decades of Master Gardener and Master Food Preserver experience, Linda Ziedrich includes fascinating cultural context and personal connections to each plant. The result is the story of how and why an adventurous gardener cultivated a unique cuisine for herself and her family-and how you can too.
New DVDs
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Moana 2
"An epic animated musical takes audiences on an expansive new voyage with Moana, Maui and a brand-new crew of unlikely seafarers. After receiving an unexpected call from her way-finding ancestors, Moana must journey to the far seas of Oceania and into dangerous, long-lost waters for an adventure unlike anything she's ever faced."
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The Lord of the Rings. The War of the Rohirrim
"It tells the fate of the House of Helm Hammerhand, the legendary King of Rohan. A sudden attack by Wulf, a clever and ruthless Dunlending lord seeking vengeance for the death of his father, forces Helm and his people to make a daring last stand in the ancient stronghold of the Hornburg a mighty fortress that will later come to be known as Helm's Deep. Finding herself in an increasingly desperate situation, Hřa, the daughter of Helm, must summon the will to lead the resistance against a deadly enemy intent on their destruction."
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Wicked
"Wicked, the untold story of the witches of Oz, a young woman, misunderstood because of her unusual green skin, who has yet to discover her true power, and Glinda, a popular young woman, gilded by privilege and ambition, who has yet to discover her true heart. The two meet as students at Shiz University in the fantastical Land of Oz and forge an unlikely but profound friendship. Following an encounter with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, their friendship reaches a crossroads, and their lives take very different paths. Glinda's unflinching desire for popularity sees her seduced by power, while Elphaba's determination to remain true to herself, and to those around her, will have unexpected and shocking consequences for her future. Their extraordinary adventures in Oz will ultimately see them fulfill their destinies as Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West."
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Here
"A generational story about families and the special place they inhabit, sharing in love, loss, laughter, and life."
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Thelma
"Inspired by a real-life experience of the director, an elderly grandmother is an unlikely action hero, demonstrating that she is more than capable of taking care of business despite what her daughter Gail, son-in-law Alan, or grandson Danny might believe. After getting conned by a phone scammer pretending to be her grandson, Thelma enlists the help of an old friend and sets out to take back what's hers."